New Monte Cook article Magic and Mystery

[Herremann the Wise]

Then you start trading magical items for land and power. And then you trade the land for other items. Land becomes your currency.

Land is easily restricted in that land may be ceded to a PC by a King or Duke and thus cannot be transferred to a third party. Alternatively, land either isn't worth that much because it is controlled by the Duke anyway. It is something that the player can never actually "own" unless they are the authority that creates the rules.
But the central point of this is that no one party can transfer enough wealth/power to pay the "true high cost" of powerful magical items and artifacts. To sell is to compromise and get far less for it than it's theoretical worth. Essentially, crafting an item is much more expensive than people's capacity to actually purchase it.

Also, under your scenario, what would you do with gems, jewelry and artwork? They cannot be sold anymore, either. Maybe you can trade artwork for gems. Well, now you've just introduced another functional currency, and you can use that currency to purchase or sell magical items.

Again the true restriction is that no regular person/merchant can tally enough wealth to pay the true cost for a powerful magical item. They can only pay what they can afford. You will still have a handful of powerful parties such as a king, the wealthiest merchant or some planar entity or perhaps a church capable of paying the true cost for an artifact but then you have to deal with and through them and their motivations. There is no other realistic or available currency for such things apart from other magical items for direct trade. This assumes that the wealth in a particular society is either highly centralized or that the wealth of that particular society is too low and evenly spread. It also assumes that producing powerful magical items requires a huge amount of resources so as they earn their expense. It is far cheaper to steal a permanent magical item than to try and produce one.

Basically, so long as items can transfer from one person to another person, an economy of some sort will exist.

True, like the cost of a packet of cigarettes in a WW2 prison camp. The trick is setting up a system so that the selling of an MI is a disastrous waste of resources and is no guarantee of garnering the funds to purchase one.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Kobold Boots]

If people really want mystery in their magic systems.

1. Tell your players that the rule books are a wireframe as it pertains to classes, races and magic. They're guideposts but you can be sure that as a GM you've changed at least one trait of everything there is in the material, including adversaries.

2. Give your players concrete info about classes, races and spells as they choose them. Don't be a dick and change a cleric into an assassin, keep the flavor, but there's always stuff people don't know about their jobs that they learn after they take them. This guarantees that each player knows stuff other players don't and guarantees that players can't just pick up a manual and know as much as the DM.

3. Realize that the currency system is not at its best when literal and that the gold standard isn't the best standard to use in all places. Barter and copper rule the rural areas with advancing levels of currency being used as more expensive things are bought. I think that the players in my last 3e campaign never saw a gold piece but had letters of marque that were worth significant amounts of gold. Forget about Platinum, that's legendary currency.

4. Magic items can be bought and sold but with concordance rules not all items will want to be owned by the person who wants them. Next up, if you really want to make magic items be willing to go on quests to either get the mats yourself or to get the mats for the arcanist that's willing to invest his time into your item. Remember that these guys are lifelong arcanists, usually like to be left alone and when they choose to live on the outskirts of the world, your gold letters of marque mean nothing to him.. barter has more value.

As to spells, muhahahahaha. The books are the beginning once you start liberally applying metamagic. Anyone going up against a wizard should be concerned.

As to the whole player entitlement thing, DMs can save themselves a lot of hassle if they take the time to build a world that keeps the players on their toes and manages expectations early. The major problem is not that the players feel entitled, it's that they know the traits of the magic items to begin with. They're too easy to look up.

Sure Tom may want the +5 Holy Avenger because it'll help him be bad ass.. but if he finds out that +5 Holy Avengers are powered by the souls of dead boy scouts who have not lived up to their destinies and the one he's found is named Tim... who happens to have a problem because he's been geased to destroy the Arch Lich Kanye West and won't give him full range of his Tim-like awesomeness until he kills Kanye..

Well sometimes it's better to just go for the +1 Dagger of explicit letter opening..

 

[Nagol]

All I can say is that my experience directly contradicts this, and I think it's a rather amusing statement. But, as always, play what you like

Just to clarify, something you refuse to sell regardless of offer is priceless. There have certainly been times in the game where I valued particular items much more highly than they were typically valued and refused to part with them even for offers with a premium.

Something you want to sell, but no one in the world is willing to buy is worthless.

So if the PCs want to sell/trade items, but that agency isn't available to them then they are carrying worthless items.

But if the PCs can trade magic items then it should be possible (even if hideously unlikely) that they can find other such items for sale/trade for something they have --once they have something obviously as valuable to the current owners, of course.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

The problem with making the items unsellable is that doesn't represent priceless, that repreents worthlessness.

Not quite, it is still worth what it does or can do at a minimum. Or it leads to adventure or a situation where it is worth something; where there is that hot spot where it could be advantageously traded. The beauty of RPG table top games is that a gamemaster can manage such things far better than an MMO can, so long as the gamemaster is given the tools to do so.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[JamesonCourage]

So if the PCs want to sell/trade items, but that agency isn't available to them then they are carrying worthless items.

But if the PCs can trade magic items then it should be possible (even if hideously unlikely) that they can find other such items for sale/trade for something they have --once they have something obviously as valuable to the current owners, of course.

While I still find your first paragraph of what I've quoted pretty amusing, I see what you're getting at. Then again, I don't think anyone proposed them not being able to trade it away in this conversation. In fact, I think that's the current proposal. Though, to be fair, maybe I missed someone saying, "the PCs should never be able to trade magic items." I just don't remember seeing that in this thread yet.

As always, play what you like

 

[GSHamster]

True, like the cost of a packet of cigarettes in a WW2 prison camp. The trick is setting up a system so that the selling of an MI is a disastrous waste of resources and is no guarantee of garnering the funds to purchase one.

The thing is that magical items are not luxuries. They are tools. Used properly, they can be used to generate wealth and power.

A man with a sword is a common soldier. A man with Excalibur is King of England.

As such, almost any price is worth paying to secure powerful magic. I think that you would have to warp your economy and world way too much in order to prevent the buying and selling of magical items.

That's not to say I'm for buying/selling items. But I would prevent it through the properties of the item itself. I.e. Only when wielded by Arthur does Excalibur come alive and unleash it's full potential. In any other hands, it's merely a regular sword (admittedly a very high quality sword).

But that approach has its own issues as well.

 

[Kobold Boots]

As such, almost any price is worth paying to secure powerful magic. I think that you would have to warp your economy and world way too much in order to prevent the buying and selling of magical items.

1. Make them rare enough and special enough that people who have them, don't want to sell them and people who have them to sell, do so at some measure of risk.

2. Seriously think about your game economy as a function of world design before starting the campaign, or keep things open enough that you don't get backed into buying and selling magic.

It is true that to obtain powerful magic one would spend or do most anything, but I find that allowing players to buy magic items takes away from the plot that results from players acquiring items by earning them or stealing them.

I think I'd allow black market trade so long as there was significant plot and not overdone.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

The thing is that magical items are not luxuries. They are tools. Used properly, they can be used to generate wealth and power.

I think the direction Monte is heading in is that they are luxuries. They are not an essential tool required by the PC. Although, I agree they could still be used to generate wealth and power.

A man with a sword is a common soldier. A man with Excalibur is King of England.

As such, almost any price is worth paying to secure powerful magic. I think that you would have to warp your economy and world way too much in order to prevent the buying and selling of magical items.

I wonder. Or perhaps this is why such items fall into the hands of people capable of holding onto them rather than those who can only afford to pay for them.

That's not to say I'm for buying/selling items. But I would prevent it through the properties of the item itself. I.e. Only when wielded by Arthur does Excalibur come alive and unleash it's full potential. In any other hands, it's merely a regular sword (admittedly a very high quality sword).

But that approach has its own issues as well.

It does but to me it is a perfectly valid one that should be part of the overall mix. It is a flavourful way of restricting magical items.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Croesus]

Now imagine that the ruleset takes that baseline to zero. You can play the game without magic and it will work. It WILL work!
BUT if you want heaps of magical items in your game it will also work. In other words, wherever on the magical item spectrum you sit for a particular campaign, it will work!

THAT is a brilliant design goal and challenge!

I don't know if I would call it brilliant design, but this was the situation in the original white box rules.

I remember very early issues of The Dragon where most of the contributors, including EGG, strongly warned against giving characters powerful items, as this would break game balance. This was mainstream thought at the time.

James Ward, on the other hand, argued that the amount and power of items wasn't important, so long as the GM increased the challenges the characters faced. If the characters were running around with holy avengers, staves of the magi, and rings of wishes, you don't throw ogres and trolls at them. You through golems, demons, dragons, and even worse things at them. So long as the encounters are challenging and fun, it doesn't matter if a group plays low-magic or high-magic. Ward's "Monty Haul" articles were excellent examples of this style of play.

As I read it, Monte is suggesting moving back to such a model. Design the rules so that characters can be challenged regardless of the level of magic, so each group can play the kind of game they want. If that's where he's going with this, I support the idea wholeheartedly.

 

[mhensley]

The truth is that giving a +5 holy avenger to a 5th level character does change the game. Challenges that would be difficult can become a lot easier. Going the other way, where a character has less magic than expected, a difficult challenge might shift to impossible.

What if you added a downside to every magic item? The more powerful the item, the greater the risk. Your +5 holy avenger is powerful, but it also attracts demons like moths to a flame. Stormbringer causes you to kill your friends on occasion. Your ring of invisibility has the dark lord looking for it.